GCSE French Tutors in London 2026

GCSE French sat by London pupils in summer 2026 is a different qualification from the one sat in 2025: AQA's specification code changed from 8658 to 8652 and Pearson Edexcel's from 1FR0 to 1FR1 when both boards moved to specifications first taught from September 2024. Seven state secondary schools across Camden and Westminster still enter pupils for GCSE French, from 3 entries at Westminster City School to 67 at Pimlico Academy, split across AQA and Pearson Edexcel.

GCSE French Is a New Qualification in 2026, Not a Rerun of 2025

Reformed GCSE French, German and Spanish specifications have been available for teaching since September 2024 and were awarded for the first time in summer 2026, Ofqual's own guide for schools and colleges states: "Reformed versions of GCSE French, German and Spanish have been available for teaching since September 2024 and are to be awarded for the first time in summer 2026." The subject codes changed with the reform: AQA's GCSE French moved from 8658 to 8652, and Pearson Edexcel's from 1FR0 to 1FR1. A boundary set on the 2025 paper is not a boundary on the 2026 paper, whatever the code looks like on a printed exam timetable — 2026 is the first cohort to sit this exact specification, at either board.

The reform also moved which board a very large number of centres actually use. AQA's own GCSE French entries fell from 97,806 in 2025 to 68,706 in 2026, a 29.8% drop on AQA's own results statistics, while Pearson's own statistics show Edexcel's GCSE French entries rising from 27,265 to 52,159 over the same year, up 91.3%. A national entries total that simply adds the two boards together hides that shift completely; our own analysis of both boards' published statistics sets it out figure by figure on our blog.

It is easy to mistake this reform for the grading change some parents remember from a few years ago — that was a different, earlier event. Ofqual decided on 5 November 2019 to align French and German grading with Spanish, and phased that change into the summer 2023 and summer 2024 results under the old specification, not summer 2025, and not connected to the new papers sat for the first time in summer 2026. We set out that full history, board by board: Why GCSE French and German Grades Rose in 2026.

Which Exam Board Does Each Camden and Westminster School Actually Use for GCSE French?

A specification code alone never identifies which board a given school actually sits, so this page checked each of the seven schools' own published curriculum information directly. Four of the seven publish an answer.

The Camden School for Girls states on its own Modern Languages page that the department follows "the AQA specification at GCSE" for both French and Spanish, moving to Pearson Edexcel only at A level. Acland Burghley School's own key stage 4 courses table lists "GCSE French AQA" and "GCSE Spanish AQA" against every other subject's board in the same format. The Grey Coat Hospital's own staff-recruitment specification states its languages department teaches "AQA GCSE & A Level Spanish, German, French". The St Marylebone CofE School is the one school here that is not on a single board: its Modern Foreign Languages page sets out two complete GCSE assessment structures back to back — one under "Exam Board: from September 2024 Edexcel", the other under "Exam Board: AQA" — for its two GCSE languages, without labelling on the page which board serves French and which serves Spanish. Regent High School, Westminster City School and Pimlico Academy do not publish which board their GCSE French follows on the pages read for this article; where a school genuinely publishes nothing, the honest answer is to say so rather than assume a board from a neighbouring school.

Which Camden and Westminster Schools Still Enter Pupils for GCSE French, and at What Scale?

Every one of the seven schools checked for this page entered pupils for GCSE French in 2024/25, on each school's own DfE Compare School and College Performance subjects-entered data. If your child attends one of these schools, this is the scale of their own GCSE French cohort, not a ranking of which language wins.

At five of the seven schools, French runs at a similar shape to Spanish rather than far behind it: The Camden School for Girls entered 49 for French against 56 for Spanish, Acland Burghley 44 against 46, Regent High School 46 against 60, and Pimlico Academy entered exactly the same number for both, 67 — the only one of the seven schools where the two counts match precisely. Westminster City School is the outlier on scale: 3 French entries against 11 for Spanish and no German row at all on its own subjects-entered table, the smallest French cohort of the seven by a wide margin. The Grey Coat Hospital is the outlier on order: its 40 French entries trail both German's 54 and Spanish's 98, so French is its smallest of the three languages, not its second-largest — a pattern a straight French-versus-Spanish comparison would never surface, because it never asks about German at all.

How Do AQA and Pearson Edexcel Structure the GCSE French Speaking Exam?

Speaking is worth 25% of the final grade at both boards, but the two exams do not run the same way, which matters directly for pupils at the schools above once you know which board they sit. AQA's Paper 2: Speaking is recorded by the class teacher and marked by an AQA examiner inside an April-to-May test window, running a maximum of nine minutes at Foundation tier and twelve minutes at Higher, across a role-play, a reading-aloud task and a photo card — the format that applies at The Camden School for Girls, Acland Burghley School and The Grey Coat Hospital, on their own published boards. Pearson Edexcel's Paper 1: Speaking — speaking is Paper 1 at Edexcel, not Paper 2 — runs 7-9 minutes at Foundation tier and 10-12 minutes at Higher, each after 15 minutes' preparation time, across a read-aloud task, a role play and a picture task with conversation. Listening, Reading and Writing are weighted 25% each at both boards too, so no single skill dominates the qualification at either.

Families across Camden and Westminster on Trustpilot:

The 2026 AQA and Edexcel Grade Boundaries for GCSE French

Because summer 2026 was the first award year of the reformed specification, these are the first boundaries this qualification has ever had — there is no 2025 sitting of the same paper to set them against. On AQA's Higher tier French paper, a grade 9 required 179 of 200 marks (89.5%) and a grade 7 required 149 of 200 (74.5%). On Pearson Edexcel's Higher tier French paper, a grade 9 required 175 of 200 (87.5%) and a grade 7 required 147 of 200 (73.5%). Check the board named on your child's own results slip before comparing either figure, since the two boards set separate boundaries on separate papers.

Is There a Progress 8 Score for GCSE French Results in 2026?

No. The Camden School for Girls' own DfE Compare School and College Performance page states plainly: "We are not able to calculate Progress 8 scores for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26. This is because there is no KS2 assessment data available to calculate the baseline for Progress 8 for these years due to Covid-19 disruption." That is the school's own page, not a general DfE statement lifted from elsewhere, and it confirms the same gap applies whichever of the seven schools above a pupil attends: any figure presented as a 2024/25 or 2025/26 Progress 8 score, for GCSE French or any other subject, is not a DfE-published number.

Why Camden and Westminster, and Not a Citywide French Figure?

London carries no results row of its own in DfE's tables, so any figure that simply says "London" is really a named school, a borough, or an England-wide average, and every figure on this page states which. This page checks seven named, individually verified state secondary schools across two boroughs — Camden and Westminster — that no other Leading Tuition GCSE location page for London had named at school level as of 7 September 2026: our GCSE Spanish page for London covers Lambeth and Southwark, our GCSE Biology page covers Barnet, Bromley, Croydon, Harrow, Islington, Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames, our GCSE Chemistry page covers Sutton, Ealing and Redbridge, our GCSE Physics page covers Enfield and Bexley, our GCSE History page covers Havering and Waltham Forest, and our GCSE English page covers Islington and Newham. It is not a claim to have checked every London borough, or every secondary school within Camden and Westminster — seven named schools, not an exhaustive borough census.

Frequently Asked Questions

Exam board and curriculum information on this page is drawn directly from each school's own published pages: The Camden School for Girls, Acland Burghley School and The St Marylebone CofE School, checked 7 September 2026, plus a staff-recruitment specification published by The Grey Coat Hospital. Entries and Progress 8 figures are drawn from DfE's Compare School and College Performance service, checked 7 September 2026. National entries and specification-reform figures are drawn from Ofqual's guide for schools and colleges 2026, Ofqual's 2019 inter-subject comparability decision and AQA's own GCSE French 8652 specification. Families researching our GCSE Spanish tutors in London page, our GCSE tuition service, or our wider tutoring locations across the UK can find each covered on its own page.